I open a
box of insecurities and
add one
more.
The sound of my voice.
The boys in their Vans
have them fully-formed by now,
chests heaving, with splotches of hair
and the usual marks of transition.
I don’t, I can’t have those
things. I meet the requirements:
I am a boy, I’ve tried it all.

But in my bed at night, sometimes,
the ocean hums its wavelength
of monsters screaming, howling
for a rise up, to see more light.
a cloud formation gargles and spits out thunders.
A shiver reaction. Muffled. Loud. The strike
cracks the lips of our skies,
and it confesses some secrets about
its own insecurities; that there is no more
wonder in silence, that there is constant
stimulation and reduced pondering,
that there is a need to get rid
of the bad feeling.

It says,
when the thunder strikes, listen
up and listen long and hard,
because there is plenty of
chaos from your own making, but I offer
you unannounced, unpredictable,
disjointed disruptions of comfort, and it is
I who make you scared of uncertainty. It is I
who make you jealous about my loud voice,
my formed voice, my raspy, powerful voice,
not the boys in their Vans.

Mother taught me flight.
Father, hover.

I learned haunt, whine,
bother,

From looking at men
stripped down to their tidies
in those Avon magazines, I found out
I liked them. Look at that paunch.
Also that crotch. And the studio light twinkle
on skin & eyes.

I looked at the *****. You have to know:
this was no sin. I covered my head
with lace antimacassar as I traced
this man’s junk with my fingertips;
I was covered.

Save for that,
I did right by rules,
most of the time.
Scraped knee, split lip,
didn’t cry at those, no,
as so ordered.

We never tell girls this, but did
you know us boys have a rite of passage
supposed to be kept secret? It goes:
Your father takes you to a hardware store.
You ask why, and he only says “this is day,
the mark of the man.” You nod.
He takes you to the aisle
with all the blades:
shears, scissors, awls, ice picks, whatever.
He lets you pick one. He pays for it.
Father takes you home, gives you the cutting tool
of your choice, and tells you to go to the bathroom,
face yourself in the mirror, and
“aim for the tear ducts.”

It’s kept secret because
it doesn’t work. Not always, anyway.
I’ve heard about other boys that missed,
both eyes damaged.

Not all, not all.
My gentle father didn’t:
he bought me Flu Game Air Jordans,
the one with maroon slithering around black.
Boys always got expensive basketball shoes.
I suppose he loved his boy, is all.

Father’s not that bad. Mother, neither.
Only clueless, maybe.
One time I came home too happy,
head-drunk thinking about this schoolboy crush,
and they never knew.
The first time I jacked off I felt the entire sky
strike my pelvis with a typhoon fizz,
and they never knew.
During prom a boy slashed my heart with a
scalpel (his cutting tool?),
and they never knew.

You can’t teach boys some things,
like how to whisper to another boy
when the light is out.

Concept:
youlovemeback.

The ingredients of cleanse
make their way
to your house.

There is

a

strobe,
two stones portioned off
a Ziggurat,
a present thing —
like wheels,
a teardrop,
nail clippings.

My father
would trim his nails
and bury them —
as seeds.

Stared
at that ***
all days and evenings.
Monsoons and
summer heat echoed.
Time circled back and forth.

Sometimes,

I would gargle
father’s beer and
spit into the ***.
Maybe it needed
Acrid, it needed
Strong. It needed
Disgusting,
Toxic. It wanted

wrong.

I turn 22.
The ***
Disappears. My father
too. Militants
took him away,
or so the chatter goes.
He wore Chinos, sun-dried
eyes, a hat.
Mice ate
the matchsticks
used for kindling.
The Queen Termite
Gave birth to more
hungry little ones
under the sink.
Dark, musty,
collapsing.
Memory, time,
fingertips. Thyme
rhymes

with mime,

I copy my father.
Trims nails.
Plants.
Waters.

Concept:
trytounderstand

This was only the nourish
he could give. It was
a copy of the nourish
his father could give —
Or so

The chatter goes.

Gather the stones.
Get the strobe.
Pound the nail clippings
and

an enzyme flows
Through, like tape recorders whirring
as they wind back to
play recorded confessions
one more time.

Free baptismals
at the church service
for hurried teens.
Free shirts for
the Insufficient.
Free lessons for
the young boy
who can’t read women.

Free at long, long last.

Concept:
fixtheheart

I lost track of time
& fell short of a lot,
like I fell short of
a body that could be
happy by itself.
& I fell short of basketball,
calisthenics, boyhood. Where
growth should be was misshapenness;
where rapid should be was idle;
where scrutiny should be
was massacre.

& I was terrifically sad
yet deemed not officially depressed,
though in front of the mirror I would
see bathed in motor oil the reflection
of my genitals, which is made of
calfskin and bruise. I also tried
various other things, like
licking my armpits, talking
to a tree, snorting
ammonia off public urinals;
every sample of grime I tried
to touch. Maybe just
to see if cleanse was a finite
thing, and if I was nearing
the end of my supply.

& I fell short of buzz cuts
and *******. Also, fighting
after school and legitimate
swagger from a legitimate
boy.
I looked too long
at differently colored lights
and stared too little at
women I was meant to
impregnate by some order
of prophecy — or the privilege
of *****. I trimmed
my nails each week and
waited for my beard to
grow. I didn’t own
any robes, and I didn’t
drink alcohol. I also
trusted too much and
ended up on the last
waves of a beautiful song,
jumping at the right
moment before siren
becomes pause.

& I fell short of bones,
breath, and humanly powers
of affection, and I waited
for someone to explain how
everything worked because
the gospels put the world
in a jar and threw
them between fire and cold
air. I would step inside
churches prepared to listen,
then at the pew I would
get lost in the tar pit
of my subconscious.

& I fell short of being
a son, a brother, a friend,
an avid decipherer of
the poetry that lands on
my palms and eats itself
if I don’t eat it first.

& I fell short of saving
the world every chance I got.

& I fell short of distinguishing
love from pity.

& I fell short of the
day a promise was supposed
to unfold
in the brink of disaster;
and it just so happens
I was asleep when miracles
occurred under my blanket,
and so to me healing
was just waking up to
an alarm clock.

& I fell short of days
I was to remain
in place as the planet
anchored itself to
the rungs of my rib
and flattened like a
gum under my command.
I was my own God, my own
whisperer of lies. I tried
to see beauty with
these eyes.

Each day, syrup.
Each day, sedation.
Each day, escaping lament.
Distortion was the
language I fell into
and bounced on.

& I fell short of
this poem, which I had intended
to make perfect sense.
Maybe to some of you
it will.

Sa dilim.
Minsan may kailangan magsalita.
Hindi, kahit yata konting kalabog.
Hilik? Dighay?
Utot? Basta may tunog.
Para hindi palaging hinala lang.
May nagmamasid, umaalingawngaw.
Palakad-lakad.
Saka na yung dapo. Haplos. Saka
Na yung pisil, yakap, kagat.
Kung may tunog, okay na.
Ay, andyan. Andyan pa rin pala.

Under the train station from across the road
one musty midnight after a late dinner, I saw him.
He was alone. He watched jeepneys pass by. He
stared at the road. He remained still when
the other workers walked past him.
He held a 7-up or maybe a Mountain Dew
by the bottleneck & brought it to his lips to drink.
He was sitting on a stool too small for him
& so his legs were spread open.
He put his free hand on his knee, in between
fingers an almost finished cigarette.
His work suspenders glowed under the
plastic fluorescent light of Althea’s burger shop,
& beneath he wore a red shirt that
fastened his torso tight. When it was time to
ride my jeepney home, I looked at him for a moment
before getting on, & it could be that
he looked right back. When we
moved forward I tried looking again
but saw he was looking somewhere else.

Manila, 2018

I’ll never forget.
MiniStop, Intramuros.
2016?
I had long graduated, the mortarboard
now a naked head of hair. The gown
now dilapidated jeans, and an overfitting
shirt. The fancy shoes now knockoffs
caked with mud and grime.
The little store was hot. Small.
On walls: baby cockroaches took chances.
Trash bags dog-eared below snack concessions.
A brown goop spun, the tungsten overhead
made no noise. Was there music? Was there
some commentary about love or crudeness on the radio?

Always self-conscious, I retreat to
the inner racks. Magazines lay there vacuumed, unpurchased.
Outside the picture window, an afternoon beamed its sun kiss.
I think I didn’t end up buying anything, because before I could,
some college boys entered. At the instant, I turned to them
and felt curiously incensed. This odd duality of envy and sympathy.
I was you, I’m me now. I want you, I’m not you now.
To look that young yet mature, to have a schedule.
To saunter inside the store before, during, after class. The
choice to enter, to parade, to be so vital.

The college boys, their plackets, collars,
their image. These hot-blooded men finer than me, stronger
than me. All handsome, winsome, reckless and brimmed with
swagger. Me? I stood examining the force, the association.
We’re all merely similar men, and I’m at a similar age, and I can
be a similar form factor. Mimic their teflon skin; shed my stucco,
leatherbound flesh.

And as soon as I attempted to undermine their specificity,
I lost my own place. I found that there’s no connection at all.
Other than I know nothing about the boys,
and the boys know nothing of me.

I.

If I wait by the mirror and
See my calves half-pressed underneath
My elbows, I’d turn into a portal. To warp
Headfirst into the frosted underbelly
Of sugary insults.

II.

You should expect her rage
Any moment now. She will stamp permanent
Burn marks across your entry points.
You will be barred from accessing
Yourself. The only choice at this point
Is to borrow a backup ghost of you.
You will live in a secondhand time. Lended
In after-phases. You will miss it: your hair,
Your old fur, your eyelids, your ****** fluids.
There’s a chance to return.

III.

I run my fingertips from clavicle,
Chest, belly button,
*****. I feel the head,
A tempered muscle.
I feel my neck cramp,
A choking sensation.
I raise my left leg, bring it to
My mouth, and fry the hair strands
With sweat. They can then become black chalk.
Valid chemicals to mark off
My genitals as a forbidden area.
No more search for the carnal.
No more lurching when
The tailspin sends firecrackers down the
Mouth to reduce itself. I am now
A humble biology, and I can
Be defined by you, any way that
You want me.

I press my ear up your belly,
I hear a falsetto of cities; a mechanic
Wrenching mugs.
I tap your sternum, I scratch it, too:
It sounds like a car running on an empty tank.

IV.

No surprise;
There’s no healing.
The disc of the world parades
Like a funeral.

V.

During siestas, the feet unlatches
From the limb, and they tread toward
Their own Mecca. By the time you
Wake up, they’re tethered back, having already been
Into the womb of their promised treaty.
They walk in rote patterns, taking
The integrated human into different places.
Then you wash it with soap and sunflower seeds,
And try to ***** it with a nail file. It is tortured, but also fulfilled.
They press into cotton, finally,
And they have served you.

VI.

The knee is a vault. See
How there’s no joint? See how
there’s just two huge bones weaved between
Sheets of muscle? A gate.
The knee is a cup when taken out,
A bunot spun from a palm tree.
What does it hold?

VII.

Some bed.

I kiss your eyes; they’re hot like the sun.
We ****; magic.
Now, in this aftermoment, we are well
Aware of our shared worth; the emptiness
Of one filled by the fullness of the other.
Or maybe it’s less
absolute than that?
Buck-naked, blankets doused in sweat, we
Attach, coil, and lock like Rubik pieces. I understand,
at that sheer momentum, the planetary involvement of
our animalistic response,
that *** can be priced.
But not this; not this time; not with
Us two scratching our calves with
Thickened skin.

Will you leave?
Will this recede?

VIII.

It will last
For others only.
I need more than that.
The hunger, the blessing
Of your carved upper lip,
The bouncy, fractured
Underpinnings of your rib. It is my
sole Purpose. I am born
For your pleasure, and you
To make me starve for
Feeling.
We transact. This is holy.
It has to be.

My father,
the man
who invented time.
My father,
the latecomer.
Life is like that.

somewhere in there
sounds like a kid
searching for another permuta-
tion of himself, some
semblance of a would-be he won’t hate.
that’s me, I’ll never run out of pain.
this genteel ache,
this conclusion, has nothing to do with choice.
there are some who’re born broken,
those unobtrusives with chapped lips, glancing up for
drones that might pick them up
then throw them to another Earth,
those who like getting into strangers’ cars, laying their head on the
dashboard that’s softer than their bed.
they on cold nights like to whisper to God: ‘we
don’t like this experiment.’ we are more
than warning signs of civilization in peril.
dead and gone.
don’t refuse exploitation; that’s how we still feel useful.
don’t the characters in some books make rooves out of leaves? too
dogged to prioritize shelter, though. too
drugged to maintain another thing
doomed to crack and crumble. just never enough time.
days flow by like silk into a sawmill. In the
dark we try to see if we still stand on strong ground, or surface tension.

such is
the rhythm. feet damp with cakemud. in
darkness we see stoplights turn red, sometimes yellow.

To be shaped by love, know first
How it destroys.

To know how it destroys,
Recognize love as a physical act.

To recognize love as a physical act,
Consider the body's limits and transgressions.

To consider the body's limits and transgressions,
Probe it for signs of anomaly. Of creatureness.

To probe, start by using your fingers to poke
Regions where illusions are cooked, like the groin.

To locate the groin, slither your hand from mouth
all the way down until you feel dirt.

Once there, dig. The mush will feel soft and wet and grisly
And delicious. Like exile. Feel around for a thin chord.

Once you get your hand on this chord, pull. Pull very hard.
Like you're born to unstitch. Or turn off a light. Or flush.

Your body will split open like a thick *** of paper bills
fresh off a rubber band hug. And your remains

Will flutter like a flag. Notice the bone marrow in bloodspeck
jangling in wind chime language to announce an arrival.

Your arrival, maybe. But what is left other than your body splayed
open? Notice your meatshop bargain delicacy. Limbs as vivid

As a freehand sketch artist's depiction of alive. It sounds so beautiful,
Love. Especially in Springtime.

Love your pain
like you’re going to lose it someday.

When we lose
There comes to be a reversal process;
a rapid prototype souped into bitten rhythm.
And then you collide, like
light particles melting film to form
some replica of an inner war. What is it
about trying; what does attempt do –
Pacify? Resize? Boost the morale
of twentysomethings clinging
to past participles like the sting of a bee?
What can you do to stop the ache
of feeling like ****? What is there to grasp
when no light appears?
But then a day comes.
It’s all fine, with friends, with music, with
anything other than self-flagellation.
At which point I fight the fight not to stay
a mere summary.

I feel like a failure today

Dancing around in my underwear



Open the fridge: junk food.

Don’t want to eat it. Take it, eat it anyway



Are you my conscience?

Tell me where my wrists are, then.



So it sounds like I’m

Stuck. I’m too good at life to feel depressed, but



Here it is, like a medal that finds itself on my neck every morning

Heavy on my ribcage.


It's either crippling sadness or abnormal, sudden fits of joy.

No balance yet. Furrowing in the middle is messy.



Zero friends. No boyfriend.

So bored. For the first time ever



I laughed while jerking off

Because what’s the point



Of pleasure.

Neverends, pleasure.



I open an unread book, then I

Close. Open another. Close again



Watch TV for a while

Wash my face



Look at old photographs of

My mother.



There’s this one. Me, a child.

My mouth singing to her hairbrush, pretending it's a mic.


Then another, me about to

Eat cake



And my mother

In work clothes



Smiling for the picture, cutting

The cake. I wonder how



Much she bought it for at the time.

I wonder



What people thought in the ‘90s

When they see a girl with short hair



Bringing cake home, holding

It by the string, suspended



Like a present.

It’s a nice photo.



It’s one of the nicest photos

I’ve seen of my mother.



Today the sun is out

For a while.



Maybe sunlight can help

Me feel anything



Other than dread.

I lust. I falter.



I put the junk food foils in the trash.

I feed the birds and, I praise



The Lord.

Sorry, lord



The breadth of your kingdom

Is lost in plain, bored me.

I’m tired of the polite
****** boy. Sick of the agreeable,
pristine, nonburping, nonfarting
carnival setpiece toy. **** the
manic-depressive psychopathic
angel. The timid, submissive
sleepover homeboy, the blow-up-doll
for rent, the 3am *******
***-dumpster hyphenate.

Imagine me, a child.
The gayboy anyperson
willing to go the extra mile.
I assure you,
this wasn’t the dream.
How you push my buttons
like a vending machine.

I ******* to you
because you’re sad.
I come lick you
because we’re okay.
Always okay. The word.
The sound of the word.
The utterance of the word.
The utter lie of the word.
Okay?
Maybe to you I’m
a toilet-trained twentysomething
who’ll receive and dispense
on command.

Maybe we are done.
Maybe I can cry in peace.
Maybe you still have a way
of curdling the milk
in my stomach from far away.

I pray one day
to **** you out.

There comes a time,
in the middle of your oppression,
when two men *******
isn’t **** anymore, but
an empowering thing
like Betadine.

Have you ever been kicked
by a bully in the groin?
a kiss should feel like this,
but only from a boy

after Ansel Elkins

Carabao **** isn't permafrost,
temperature, disdain — climates
stirring into a tornado soup
of force, melting, seclusion.
In the heartbeat of gulls,
the waves gargled froth and
spat on charred limestone.
Then the grass beneath our
wet feet writhed in the
slice of wind atop the hills
of Hiyop, in Catanduanes
where roads go unmoored from
their skiffs like violin
strings curling under sharp
slide. You can invent a new
word to describe transformations,
but these will never catch it
in the act — the moment
vibration somersaults into
howl, when swinging grass
is louder than jetplanes
then suddenly quieter than
prayer. I like to dig my thumb
into the soft marsh, dirt
occupying the folds, creases;
labyrinthine pathways of skin
blanketed with Earth.
At this point the mountain
knows me;
and I dare to know the
mountain but come short, reaching
only its narrow berms,
pockmarks,
and ****-ridden sheath of
dry flowers cooking the
words to a song of its
people.

It’s always after a film when you say,
“Did you like it?” I think for a little while.
I think of the film as a whole, in chopped parts, and time
spent watching it that’s become time no longer.
It’s swimming now in a stream of phantom haze; less of a memory,
and more of the carbon imprint of an experience over.

We argue a lot if we liked it. I think I did, but over
the course of plenty moments, my mind goes restless: What if to say
I liked it somehow violates its completeness? I don’t trust memory
can tell me everything. A moment stretches, it happens a while;
then it's finished. Once immense now vapor; the thing no longer
the exact thing. And to access that again, to recall the past, plays with time.

After the film, you and I have a nice time.
I’d ask for this thousands of times over.
Running through street lights, shadows are cast: mine’s always longer.
You catch up, you giggle, there’s nothing to say.
We stay kinetic for a while.
The spools, the underpinnings, the machinations move, and create a memory.

The film was about a town that one day stopped speaking. One memory
of it astounds me most: The more time
passed, the clearer it became. It took a while,
but we finally knew why. But the credits rolled and it was over.
The audience vacated the room and it belonged to us. We didn’t say
anything. A respite emerged, and it grew longer.

You look at the shadow again, longer
than yours. I wish it was easy for me to access my memory,
and to access yours, too. I wish I could say,
“Did you like it?” and see you go back through time,
back before present turned into past, before it became over,
back when the vapor was the immense, and the blip the while.

While
longer,
still over.
Memory and
time.
“I liked it,” I say.

It took a while, but we have the memory.
We can access it longer than the merits of time.
And when it’s over, I’ll forever say.

I. You

An old friend.
He liked me until
I began forming opinions

about pizza.
Soap.

Then politics.

And, X-Factor.
I hated that show.

Because!

He ******* loved it.
Told me, ‘What’s wrong with you?
People just wanna feel good for a while.’

I said it ***** because
it prioritized deliberation
among all facets of performance.

‘You look into it much
more than necessary.’

I looked into everything.
How come you can grow a beard and I can’t?
What was your puberty like?
Did you know lithium-ion batteries degrade overtime?
Keith, don’t charge it beyond 80%. Always stop there.
Then, once a month, charge it to full capacity then

Drain. So it recalibrates.
That’s because batteries have memory.

I look into you.



II. Me

Here’s how to tell a story.
First, gather the facts.

Then,
transmit the feelings of those facts.

We met.
We fell hard.

And as if they’d respond, we
asked the stars what type of connection
they gave us. A pact. An alliance.
A lasting impression? A semblance.

It felt like a love we were free to define. But you
went away, I didn’t come running. Or I lost you
along the way when I hid you in my shirt pocket.
You must have fallen from a hole.

There were words in my pocket, too.
But they were bigger than you. I clung to them and pasted
them onto me like suntan. Scorch, scorch, you *******.

After transmitting the feelings, characters come in,
complaining they deserve better stories.

‘I got it.’ You do got it.

‘I just got in here.’ You’ve been in there for hours, man.

‘Why do I keep wanting you?’ I say the same thing. I don’t mean it.

It ends with an episode of X-Factor.
First, gather the facts.

Then, transmit the feelings of those facts.

But people just want to feel good for a while.

Their backs heavy
with the burden of
one more evening
shared without knowing
each other's names.
Smoke from their
cigarillos billowing
thin, floating in the
room like ghostprint,
steam from the
carcass of an affair.
A small lightbulb
and two shadows
barely moving.
We're talking two
boys, two bodies
on the bed.
Swimming.
Sinking.
Sailing.
The faucet drips
faster than the wall
clock ticks.
I count.
     one drip, two drips
There are too many
things I want to ask him.
But after *** there
is only endless pause.
He lies there with his belly
rising and falling.
I time my breaths
so that his stomach
is up when mine is down
     three drips, four drips
On the bathroom mirror
there's half a fingerprint.
I wonder if someone had
wiped the other half.
or whoever left it was
incomplete.
     five drips, six drips
I like the sounds you
bring out in me. The
way I'm primal with you.
A creature. An animal
enduring the whiplash
of almost having all of
you, and all of this,
whatever it is.
     seven drips, eight drips
I used to think we have
*** because we like the
anguish of fleeting
****** contact. But now
I understand. There is
a sacredness to the way
we don't want to acquire
each other. That the
passion burns in a vacuum,
away from distinction,
from names. I'd want more
soon. I know myself.
     nine drips, ten drips
But for now, this will do.
I twist the faucet close.
And wipe the rest of the
fingerprint.

When he moved into the new apartment,
he chose not to open the boxes right away.

Thrilled as he was to find new spots
for old things, he waited until it rained

to see if there would be any leaks on walls.
He waited, and waited, but the rain never came.

Without anything to touch, to play with, to arrange,
he spends days sitting on the wooden chair, the one

caked with paint drips. There, he ponders about the new place,
about when rain would finally come, and he imagines it

sounding like fingers tapping a hollow instrument, or perhaps
pat pat patting like a rabbit hopping toward shelter.

It comes one evening as he sleeps. Droplets
bulleting the tin roof. He does not wake.

In his dream, two men come rushing inside his home:
one slides a gun down his throat. He asks what they want.

The gun-wielding man doesn’t answer. He looks squarely
at him, on his knees nearly choking. The other man

is hauling all his boxes out of the new apartment, leaving
only the dusty outlines where they sat unmoved for months.

Finally, the man slides the gun out his mouth, shakes the spit
off the neck. I’m just new, why me? He asks.

Don’t ask me, I’m just a robber, the man says.
He takes off, slamming the door so hard the hinge breaks.

When he wakes, the rain has stopped. Still in the interim
between dream and real life, he checks if the boxes are still there.

They are. The windowsill is damp.
Outside, under the dim porch light,

he finds tiny puddles on the soles of his sandals.
He strolls lightly before the iron gate, and around him

the faint glow of light from neighboring windows,
the muffled voices of people on TV,

The rare wind who can’t decide
whether to whistle or chime.

Inside, he opens his boxes and fishes out
every hidden thing.

There is a place for each, and while there is something
to be afraid of, it’s not nightmares about thieves.

10:00 am. How
is it still dark?

In a forest.
Top bunk. The hint
of apocalypse

In his sleeping face, the
world away.

I come down the ladder,
foot landing light on
the floorboards.

Cocooned in a blanket
as I head toward the porch.

There’s no roof. Only screen doors,
wireframes, a platform. Can’t
call it a house yet.

To the lake I go to meet the Fish.
The second I get there, it shoots out from the water,

Telling me,
“your clock is broken.” Then it plops back in.
I leap and return to our “house.”

With military precision and speed, I reach the top bunk.
But in my rush, I stop and see

His strange face, still asleep.

I ****** the clock from the wall.
I wind it back to 7:00 am. Then the sun
Comes up.

I go to him.
I lay with him.

I put my hand over his belly,
feeling it falling and rising
as they replenish with air.

He begins tossing slowly.
And I hear the growl.
The sandpaper breath.

The thing you do
to get the morning out of you.

And on cue,
his eyes open, seeing me. There is a moment
when he doesn’t recognize me. Then it registers:

I am a person he knows. We are in bed.
It is morning. This is the only place we belong in.

There is nothing to worry about. Everything is correct.
The hierarchy of details worm their way in shortly thereafter:
Weather—sunny. Temperature—a bit cold. Feeling—hungry. Taste—dry.

Soon the wub wub wubs heard through his grogginess
dissolves into clearer, more articulate ambients.

With nothing out of place, finally,
he looks at me. I can see he knows me.
I can see he knows I’m obsessed with his skin.

I want to eat it. I want to wear it.
I want to burn it then inhale it.

My lips glide over his chest;
his knuckles rub my ribs,
like police dragging their batons along prison gates.

Finally, he asks the thing he always asks,
a question I always fear.

“What time is it?”

I say what I always say.
“The time is right.”

The nature of man is one of impulse
and deceit. You can see it in his life
through time. But suppose,
merely suppose,
there was another way to measure
man’s life aside from time. Will his efforts to deceive
be seen as something else?
Will his impulses then come from somewhere else
more defined, less shapeless? Will his colorless workaday
life have overarching purpose?
It felt false the first time,
living life as a series of consequences following another,
like a story development in a newspaper.
It’s not about perspective.
Nor is it about reflection.
I’m looking, I’ve told you already,
for a way to look at life
besides cause and effect, A-B-C;
besides punishment following sin, sin following intent,
intent following motivation, and motivation
following need.

There could be another dimension
where all these, the spent life, make perfect sense.
Where the shapeless nausea of every day
form the pastiche of a more understood self. Where
the ***** nuances of error are highlighted, mingling
with the big abstract things.
But for now time is simply passing by.
Perhaps this is just right.
Perhaps the unknown must stay the unknown.
Because what does an answer give, really?

An average egg is around 40 to 60 grams.
That is the measurement. It is still an egg,
not the result of an egg, not the weight of an egg.
A measured egg, a reflected egg. An observed egg.
Time arrives and turns the egg into something else.
And at that moment, the first measurement suddenly becomes
false.

In my house the men
wear breastplates for fun, and
the women race heavenly
on the speedway, the soles
of their feet caking with sand.
Yes, my house has a speedway.
If you close your eyes for a moment
it feels like a beach minus the tangerine
minus the birdcalls

minus the summer spit
frying old skin.

I keep forgetting. There
was a commotion in 1995 when
a bird flew inside a house to
eat Chia. Then, a truck killed
A boy’s pet dog. Leaves flew all around,
and a cockroach kingdom
feted underneath our road, in
The labyrinthine sewer systems.

These are my questions: who records
the super intimate crumbs of human moments?
Do they even matter in the blip of time?
Where are the books that failed to sell?
When a woman looked at the painting, it moved her.
What happens to that painting when she dies?
Will it look back at the woman staring and remember
A profound solace?

The music of 1995 latches
to the memory of a given, limited
demographic. But they had other things going on, too

at the time

Humans similar to them collected their bill payments
and sold them meat and sandals.

A fabric of time
taut, invisible

It streamed down naked with pollen. People of 1995 inhaled and sneezed it.
Where did it go?

It’s 2017 now. A stranger with fireworks looks me in the eye.
What do you think of your birth year.
The people that came before, who moved and admired
the Systems, the Comforts. As if each time they spent
Looked like a wholly different world to the future observers.
Just that, **** happens — and there’s nothing
you can do about it.

But maybe there’s one thing.
We can talk about it, yeah. But only
Say it in words, mime that whole timespan in pictureform,
Or mimic some simulacrum in moving pictures.

Once a fossil, always so, emotions.

By design.

I surrender to your chest
and press my face against it,
as soft as wool
clipped from a sheep
who couldn’t say
I suffer.

I dread the day
I’ll make you say
I’ll leave you. But that is
what I do. I find
angel boys and postpone
their holiness.

I teach these boys
there’s a space
between blood and bone
to store prayers. That
the whistling pressure that
sequences our next heartbeats
are disappearing acts.

I make them
piggyback on me
as I kneel on all fours in
glass shards and make them say
they like it. They learn to.
They ask if
it could be them kneeling
in pain next time. It is
around this time
when I call it quits.

I said I delayed holiness.
But some of them
Never claim it back.
There’s a river of discarded objects
under the skin of someone
who’ll die for you,
and those they want back.

Between blood and bone,
prayers are stored, yes.
Yet for now, the chest;
rising and falling,
my face against it.
The lung beneath you
a universe-ordered shape
as perfect as a handhold
dovetailed into prison rails.

Beautiful angel boy.
So soft and warm.
Do you hear how loud
it gets
when the moon pulls Earth
and Earth doesn’t say
I suffer.

It happens when
we go quiet
and then quiet
hangs in there
a bit longer than usual.
I look away
and think
—will it ever be love?

I am counting the number of days
since I last talked to my mother;

not to worry, we have not been okay
my entire life, so this is not anything new

by the stretch of the imagination.
It’s funny, that phrase—imagination like

a rubber band, and a million versions of us
in between going farther away as you

stay in your end of the deal, and as do I.
Mother, I wish you used the same material

to make my umbilical cord, so even
after my many falls, I could snap right back.

But you did not. The cord was connective tissue
and errands and the relief of not having period

pain for nine months yet the impending
astronomical event of having a whole new

body to feed, to recognize as your own,
a spitting image of that ancestral buildup

you know well: the never making something
of your life, the token of You and Papa’s

foolishness, barely thirtysomethings yet
fates already sealed. When the doctor

cut through my only tether to you,
no one knew from then on I would be

on my own, and it would take seventeen
more years for me to know that. I am

counting the number of days you will
waste thinking there will ever be

a way to ******* back to you.

So you can be a bird
and still love rain.

But it was all
while in fugue, even
as a neighbor stood there
barefoot, the trilling cicadas
barely heard. A climate
rippled the calm like a
faint heartbeat
beneath damp ground.
I knew these people;
the sort to meet in stopovers.
Briefly, modestly, passively.
They carry conversations
by vibration, not talk.
Withdrawn moans,
grunts, edgewise glances
more potent words.
One night, I touched
him. He needed
to be touched.
To be so far away
to forget warmth, how?
He touched me back.
I allowed. His body melted
onto the floor, leaving only
a lit cigarette. I unlatched
instantly, like a derailed train.
His body gathers; the marrows
retreating to their proper places:
blood, bone, muscle, skin
assuming back a shape.
The town held a quiet night
the way newborns are held.
No one needed to know.
He will forget.
I will, too. The cigarette
belched a thin trail of smoke
until its fire ran out.

apologizes
to straight boys whose perfect *****
have proper places.

I. Entrance

We gather at the quay.
I accuse you, you present the evidence disproving me.
It goes this way for some sampling of forever,
until one’s neck pops, loses vitals.
Clinging to muscle, marrow.

This wharf, an apocalypse story, has become
a trusty habitat. Only nights here.
Sometimes when the moon gets closer, I tap you.
Tell you,

‘How beautiful, how bigger.’

But you remind me:
bigger moons mean higher tides, up to our shins.
It becomes more difficult to wade, walk.

This is what I fell for, your eye for consequence.
What did you see in me?

We start coming apart soon, we hear it from miles away.
It nicks at us via vibrations and frequency,
tap water dripping, scuffing sounds beneath the floorboards.
I notify you immediately. The occurrences of anomaly that speak for us.
I encourage its meanderings and delay. You want to sit it out, too.

So we sit. In a time-tune tick-tock launch-dock gallivant.


II. Exit.

I am merely dangling from your rope, this is
The Image; tied to your *******.
We have managed to keep it that way.
Until I learned the pendulum effect and swung away.
Swung away.

Your purchasing power will work on a new, polished person, I’m sure.
I can’t, anymore.
You harvest me, but you don’t distill me.
I sleep in a silo, I talk to ghosts. They tattle tales—

History lessons


III. Escape Hatch

The sound, the nuisance, the indication, develops a raspier voice.
The vibrations eat on the pollen of our delay,
and at one point
we combust.
Alarms go off.
People get to work.
Normal sequences play out.
I think of you, then I can’t.
Soon you’re a phantom atom in a fog, diffusing slowly.

It will end with an engine dying.
In receipts with faded ink. Movie tickets.
A broken cinema chair will remind you of it.
But that’s fine.
Some say there will be nuclear waste
one has to dump somewhere, some vacuum without portals.

But we make portals.

For you,
the world.

A blanket
of time.

A surge
of dread.

In
your eyes.

For you,
the world.

The pillars,
the rubble.

Welters of war,
inner and visible.

Science, politics,
art. Leak

light into
the blossom

of
quiet.

For you,
the world

intends, supposes,
intimates.

Gives
collapse.

Gives
wait.

Gives
awake.

For you,
the world.

Your bruise,
the weakened heart.

The trust
lended.

The breath
spent.

For you,
the world.

The mere thought
already catastrophe.

The blow
blow blow

The hot to
the touch.

The want
of supper,

The membrane
of a promise.

The objects
of desire.

The properties
of fire.

For you,
the world.

The hurry
up!

A panic
call.

The I’m
better,

The I’m
nothing.

Bless the
touching you.

Bless the
fooling you.

Bless the
pick up,

the not knowing
What to do.

For you,
the world.

We
watch

Then turn
our heads

To stare
at the speed.

I
puncture.

You
puncture.

You
outlast.

Pinch your
throat

and say
Amen.

I feel,

like I always have,

The stubble on his chin
Bristling my underbelly like grass blades.
My warm skin melts it into moth wings that eat
Our shared sweaters in the closet space
He vacated three years ago,
When it was just fine to shout his name
Across the hall to make sure he ate dinner already,
To make sure the tickets were by the lampshade,
That the headphones were borrowed by his friend early that morning

I remember,

like I always have,

The way steam forms automatically
On glass panels when heated,
The strange shape of your voice,
The two strange shapes of your voice:

The first for me, was lovelier than the other-
It was the voice who asked how my summer had been.
The soothing, corrosive voice, telling my ex to *******.
It was a voice found in the thin aisles between Peruvian priests
When they come together and think they haven’t sinned.

The other voice was thick, turbid, and button-nosed.
The way asterisks quickly fixed typographical errors.
The sultry, commonfolk, arcane voice that I love so much.
It was heresy.

I’ve heard gems form at the mouth of deep reserves, and I’d like to pretend
That’s where you are
That’s where you went
That’s where you are hiding
And time comes when you return
Gem or sans gem,
I’ll put your chin, like I always have,
On my underbelly.
Like a infant who deployed
Without cutting their placenta open

In the days leading up to my ******,
I saw a message in the form of a tattoo
On the back of this guy I was having *** with.
It was a picture of a skiff too far from its port
Yet not close enough to know for sure whether it was
arriving or beginning to drift away from dock.
When you're having ***, everything is symbolic (?),
so I took this picture as a demonstration, delivered
by kismet or something like it, of the way I seem
to dither between mooring myself to a pair of eyes that see me,
—flesh, not for what it is but for what it could be: sweating animal.
Dangerous animal. Animal to be forgiven—
and escaping, a spray of foam there on the crest
trailing its ebbs and bobs, dispersing
as it ripples and fades flat. I don't know anymore.
Who I am What to be What to like How to dress
Whom to befriend When to use whom What prayers are for If they work.
Suddenly I stop the *** and ask this guy, Why the tattoo?
He turns around, kisses me, fondles me, cups my breast,
almost squeezing, turns me around, penetrates me,
and lets out a moan so sinister it was
nearly love.

I hope you can forgive me.
When I said I am,
I meant I seem. And when I said
The Earth is round, I meant
It looked round. You don’t
Believe much in science. You think
There is no chemical response
when I tell you I’m depressed.
Sorry — I seem depressed.
Literally, a flower is in front of your face,
And you question it.
Here is a flower. No —
I hold what seems like a flower.
When an earthquake occurs, you’ll say,
Those movements felt like an earthquake.
It was, and is, an earthquake.
You can’t deduct truth from a situation
Using language. You can only be precise with it.
Oh, be. You hate be. To be, an anomaly
In communication. What is be? Assume a state?
Turn into another thing, far different from the
Previous version of yourself? Be concocts
An idea of an abstract future. Is. Are. Be. Was. Been.
It won’t matter much.
I’ll be leaving you.
You are an *******.
You don’t seem like one —
You are actually one.
I am stating that as a fact. Pontificating, if you will.
I am tired of your *******.

Leave me alone maybe means
go away yes but be here
in one call. When the ground beneath you
shakes keep going but turn back when
mud stops being thick.
Avoid getting too lost.
The unknown place after the reed
is off limits. Maybe

I put up the chainlink
because I want the trespass.
But that

way we only go so far.
The hope is that
you’re still an animal
by the end of this abuse,
unquestioningly

returning to the long-haired girl sweeping land with her herding call.
There in a blanket of mist, she stands barefoot and unmoving like a scarecrow.
She moors the cows to her side of silvery dawn.

—unquestioningly
because what is there to ask?
It is known to work, the ancient
Scandinavian song of lure.

When I'm excited, I turn young
and cry wine blood, in my tongue
bitter and slick and arousing
like the bleak colors of international
pain. I wear a necklace forged from
the calves of men from the moon,
I invite moaning thunders in my room.
I am perplexed. Why did I waste my
youth pretending I was old. Why didn't
I offer my body as springboard for parasites
to court the song of decadence from
between the slippery crotch of mountains.
I am now with age and yet without age.
I've been seen. Touched, too, and combed
and stretched and smote to coarse powder
now riding the wind where we go off violining
down the perilous slopes of people's
roofs. Time, take me back to a place I
didn't know was waiting for me.
Time, take me back to fix the failure
of language. I know. The past is a cemetery
of spasms. I know. The present is a heartburn
in progress. I know. Only in the future
can I see the work being done.

God said,
are you ready to process the hurt.
to stop keeping your pain there.
I said,
where is it, God?
Where do I keep it?
I feel it seep into my marrow.
I think it’s a cola fizz
erupting in my throat forever.
The heart inflating like a rubber glove.
Did you wear my heart in your hands, God,
as protection from twigs and splinters
when you collected
soil and dirt to give Earth earth?

You overthink things, God said.
Then show me the design.
Lay it all on me.
I can’t, God said.
If I do
you’ll discover why we **** up
the people we love.

How do I get there.
How do I dig it up.
Is it even dug?
Is it cocooned, vacuum packed,
locked inside a vault
in a lava pit?
Passworded?
Iris-scanned?
Police line do not cross.
Is it that gruesome.
Does it exist somewhere
between denial and delay?

God smiled.
And said
There.

There? What?

A sly God.
But.
I had a guess.
Could it be?

The locking mechanisms of pain
is pain itself?
But that’s too simple.
I couldn’t believe that was by design.

11am. A disaster waiting to happen.
A pearl of sweat dances down
my fat belly. I scream at my mother.
I scream at my father, who flees.
My mother’s face quiver
like a defeated child’s. Then I remember
a picture of her. She’s cutting
my birthday cake, in her work clothes.
No gloves.

He cut his hair, 21,
because at 13, he thought
it would be the end of the world to
don a skinhead. In the end, though,
his scalp looked okay.
It tickled his palm, touching it.
It felt like a baptism
to have been wrong.

/

Books with no pictures started
appealing to him, 14, when he read
about a highschooler who played tennis,
and a fellow highschooler who attempted suicide
because they got to him, stunned him.
This book was lost one day,
and it felt like the world ended.
A language was embedded there that
seemed to belong to him exclusively.
But it was time for it to be somebody else’s.
Someone needed to own it. Then lose it, too.
It needed passing-around, so that it could evolve.
It might return someday, all tattered and shopworn.
Will it feel the same?
Maybe. But perhaps it would be him who isn’t.

/

He imagines, 25, a life somewhere else.
He’s tired of punctuality and order.
The older he gets, the more
it seems control is mere illusion.
It terrifies him to accept that
at some point, he would have to jump.
He would have leave behind everything,
everyone. A major overhaul of the self
is bound to hurt orbiting objects, but it takes
an explosion, maybe, to begin like
It was the first time.

/

The pain of self-hatred
will never leave. It has distorted
the way he perceives, the way he accepts,
the way he welcomes. Hugs
will feel like something he has to do.
Tears won’t come at command.
Excess will seem ordinary.
Horrors will be regular intervals of stimulation.
That is the burden of not knowing
How to save yourself.

/

He will wrestle with time one day,
argue, bargain with it.
But it’s not something
that gives, only occurs.
Maybe he has to stop thinking
he needs to give.
Like time, maybe he has to
let himself occur.

It is late at night somewhere
plain and dusty as he grabs my hips,
pulls me in, and kisses my
stomach. I touch him back.
Cheeks first, tracing all the
way down to his upper lip,
Then my finger circles back and lands
on a fallen eyelash
on the bridge of his nose.
I try picking it up but it won’t stick.
“It won’t stick,” I tell him to move
away from the flickering light.
I pinch it away from his nose and hide
it between my thumb and forefinger.
“Make a wish,” keeping the hermetic seal.
When he opens his eyes and smiles at me
(I like it when he smiles that wide, the canines and all)
I make him choose a finger. “Up or down?”
He taps my thumb. I open.
The hair is wedged between the whorls of my forefinger
— it means his wish won’t come true.
He gives me a sad, sad look.
The wind blows it away from
my fingertip. He pulls me in again,
my rough denim sliding up against his
thighs, spread open. I lose balance
and out of sheer reflex I grip his shoulders,
bare and drenched in night sweats. I wipe them off
with the cuffs of my jacket.
I brush his bangs to the side
and slide my finger across one of his sideburns,
which feel like new toothbrush bristles.
He asks me to exhale directly onto his eye.
He wants know if it would turn his vision foggy,
like when exhaling on glass. I tell him to shut up.
I tell him I want to ride a taxi home for once,
even though it’s just blocks away from here.
Inside the taxi, he barely looks my way.
He’s propped close to the window
blowing cold air and drawing *****.
I feel a need to check the time.
I feel a need to put his mouth on my mouth.
Then I think of wanting rain, of wanting all sorts of disasters
to smite our naked bodies as we slither
up against each other on the last floorboard
floating on top of this flooded city.
But I close my eyes instead. Trying to guess
what his wish was.

I see with my eyes closed
the warmth of your skin
if you just stop punishing
yourself.
And since we’re here,

I press on your shoulders
like boulders sinking and
tearing the earth’s surface once
they reach ocean’s bottom.

Is that why you flinch
at the tap?
Is that why your bruised knuckles
rap over the mantelpiece
and you snap, like a twig
stepped on by a fallen bird
learning the difference
Between fly and drop?
Won’t you let me
close the gap
between used items on your
mantelpiece and
other ones still wrapped?

I don’t do this all the time.
There is no occasion.
But since we’re here,
since we’re in front of
a fireplace, I look for an opening.
Something, a hole,
a soft mushy layer on
your body not a glacier
like everything else.
And I wait for it to melt.

Since we’re here,
maybe it’s time to
trust me.

Remember that?
Saturday.
When we woke up
before the alarm rang.
You told me that
when you were a kid
your cousin said,
“You’re supposed to tear
through the wrapping paper
when you receive a gift because
that builds the surprise.”

I felt some massive force
pull me out of body, an astronaut
****** out of an airlock when you said,
“I’ve never tried that.”

You remember that?
Of course I do.
Why’d you mention that?
I want to.
Since we’re here.
We better.

Lying here, my back pressing
On your back while sleeping
And breathing. When we sleep
We lose control of the rules.
The body drives itself: submit,
It says. But are you there? Maybe.
And where is that exactly?
I am no expert on place.
Though I know I feel
less of me when you are there but
Not there. That's okay. Here but not
Here, that's where I am, too.  
More often than you.
And more like this,
Me waking before you, will come.
All that needs to be done is wait.
And wait is the only unbreakable promise.
To you, I promise to be whole even when
I'm living in the interim between here and unhere.
Even if I'm a resting carcass penduluming
From one end to the other. This is why
I go away, you see. I wish the answer was simpler.
I want it to be simpler because I can't
Lose you again.
Nothing compares to the percussive
heart assault of descending into
your mind. Or falling into you.
Your chest
Rising then falling,
the print of ribs underneath like gift-wrapped cages.
That's really what falling is.
Together
even in the lapse of alive.
In this Vulcan moonshade, all I can do is
adore you while I wait for sleep to come.

I clear my throat, because that
is the thing one has to do to not
sound Gay. The vocal cords will vibrate,
come awash with a thin liquid film to evince
the Tough Male Sound Format for five seconds, so
I can answer yes, and no, and say
how are you, how have you been, what’s your name to
anyone who does not know, to anyone
who must not find out. When I talk to myself,
It is heard, though: The high pitch, the twang, the flirtations.
It sounds honest when I’m alone, singing in the bathroom when I ****.
When people are with me, I keep it
like a password in my wallet.
So it knows two things:
Hide and unleash, and honestly? It is getting tired
of knowing it has two voices for each.
I sound like a ***. There’s a jump in my As,
a wider opening of the mouth when I do my As,
the teeth showing with As, the identifying lilt,
the **** **** **** of a laugh, the longer tail
of end-syllables, the Mms and Ohhs not enough grit:
All embedded sound files that can get me killed,
that can make me see that I haven’t really stepped out
of the closet; I just opened it, and I can close it each time I like,
each time I find necessary,
like the wallet where I keep my password, like my mouth when
I say keep the change in the borrowed voice of
an Alpha Dog Anymale.
I was inside of my home one time, though.
Clasped in my religion of boundaries.

And then it started raining,
water droplets pelting rooves and shingles and wooden planks,
clapping
on the boardwalk where plants sit.
Closed my eyes. Funny.
the rain sounded like a crackling fire.

There was love here before.
Some animal on a plank.

Didn't hold for very long.

Rain came often. No one saw.
Puddles formed and dried
at the same times.
Because there was no Occurring.

A restaurant chain
had opened up a franchise
in a stopover, alcoved
by gasoline parkways,
sheeted in neon.

I found it that night
on my way.
Great food.
Great place.
A time to ****.

Strangers cast curious smiles.
Some ask questions about
where you're headed.
I wish we knew
when small talk
butterflies into
big talk. Then we can know.
This is serious.
Someone will learn and,
if I'm lucky,
try on my plans if it fits.

The air conditioning whistles and howls.
Some stereo sounds: a horror show
about doctors malpracticing in purpose.
Gore gore gore.
Filthy good. Feel cranked.
I walk to my jacket and open the door,
sounding the bell.
Night greets me back
its smells.
Menthol and ****.

I am headed north.
But this was great.
Nice time.
Cheers?
Cheers.

All we do is deconstruct,
this isn’t love. This is
microscopic examination
of potential disasters.
This is you building
an escape hatch before
there’s any reason to flee.
The weight of your hands
on my underbelly feels
like frisk. What’s there?
What did you find?

God is looking at you

asking, what are you up to?

‘Cause this is what happens
when you hand yourself
over to somebody else
& you’re alone in your head —
the least where you want to be
— wanting to find even a sliver
of evidence that they ran away vs.
you pushed them away & which
is worse. I am not yet tired of
remembering ruin. I want my
eyeballs soaked in a coffee pit.
I want the three seconds I admit
I need rescue to last longer before
I snap back & hit my face hard.
I want freedom to choose not to be me.
I want to be reborn as a motionless
centerpiece in a street with skyscrapers
so high they cover the sun. I want to
wear stripes & I want toy guns in the
compartment of my imaginary
2nd-hand Lexus & I want my food vacuumed
off the floor with a metal detector. I want
paper skin & dotted lines around my neck
& collarbone as if to say hit here, or find
the missing panel. I want to learn all forms
of worship & the names of all gods male
& female one-headed three-headed
featherskinned slimy able to breathe
under water can hold lightning can **** son
can shoot laserbeams from eye
can run like a horse & act like a man.
I want to touch a full moon with my bare hands
& I want to do as I am told & I want to
focus on my own paper & I want a sudden
stroke of genius to fly away like a plastic
bag before the tornado blows the roof off
our heads. I want to control the climate
& tilt the world a bit more downward
so Antarctica gets more nights. Somebody
whispered in the wind the secret of walking
& I think I already know what it is.

I can’t sleep. It’s 4 in the morning.
I’m thinking of disappearing.
Not running away, but actually
wishing to be gone. As in the body
has had enough replenish and wants
instead to be a vacuum.
As in the body is
the only place that
has no interim between
detonating a bomb
and the residue falling
like featherweight acid hail.
Looping forever like
a memory without suffer.
No absurd pain
of shattered bones, no healing
required.
Do I want this?
I want sleep. It’s 5.

My boy
stick your tongue out
even if no winters
could ever arrive here.
Don't wait.
Come and go
As you please.
Earth is a hotel room
of strangers
rehearsing abandon
with ease.
When you get cold,
bet on me.
I can lay
my body down.
Fitting to yours
like crooked teeth
biting the ridges
of a saw.
I promise, it's
a soft bite.
Trust, that's all.
And I'll try my best.
But please.
Don't ever ask,
Are We Here